Before domestic violence hot lines and safe houses were widespread, June Briand shot four bullets into her husband’s head and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival—and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him.

What kind of woman would slay her own husband? What kind of man would drive her to do it? Why didn’t she just leave him? Based on hundreds of hours interviewing June Briand, speaking with her lawyers, and poring over countless pages of court transcripts, police and hospital records, and interviews with virtually every key person involved with this case, the author explores those difficult questions while exposing the twisted dynamics of a relationship that enslaves a woman—and drives her to kill the beast she loved when she was finally out of hope, out of time, and out of her mind.

At once terrifying and maddening, heartrending and ultimately exhilarating—including an unforgettable glimpse inside a maximum security prison—THE BEAST I LOVED is a book you won’t soon forget.

Product description

Review

“As gripping as THE BURNING BED.”—John Saul, New York Times Bestselling Author

“A superbly written, riveting—often horrifying—story urgently needed for our time. Davidson—with a reporter’s eye for detail—delivers a powerhouse page-turner about the limits of what a human being can endure...and still come out victorious. With mesmerizing suspense and the heart-stopping twists and turns of a fast-paced crime novel, here is an important book that ensnares the reader from the first page, and should be read, then read again.”—Susan Page, bestselling author of If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single? and Executive Director of the acclaimed San Miguel Writers’ Conference

“The book is gripping; it reads like the best of mystery novels and the reader cannot wait to find out what happens in the next section or chapter. It is an excellent supplemental reading source for the upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses I teach on Family Violence. The author does a superior job of getting the reader into the mindset of a woman experiencing both the battered woman syndrome and learned helplessness...The outcome is totally unpredictable and a reader would be well-advised to avoid the temptation to turn to the end in order to learn the final outcome.”—Raymond Teske, Jr., Ph.D., Professor, Criminal Justice Center, Sam Houston State University

Product Description

Before domestic violence hot lines and safe houses were widespread, June Briand shot four bullets into her husband’s head and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival—and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him.

What kind of woman would slay her own husband? What kind of man would drive her to do it? Why didn’t she just leave him? Based on hundreds of hours interviewing June Briand, speaking with her lawyers, and poring over countless pages of court transcripts, police and hospital records, and interviews with virtually every key person involved with this case, the author explores those difficult questions while exposing the twisted dynamics of a relationship that enslaves a woman—and drives her to kill the beast she loved when she was finally out of hope, out of time, and out of her mind.

At once terrifying and maddening, heartrending and ultimately exhilarating—including an unforgettable glimpse inside a maximum security prison—THE BEAST I LOVED is a book you won’t soon forget.

Customer reviews

Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon.com

Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
2 reviews

Ron K

5.0 out of 5 starsA Domestic Abuse Survivor Horror Story

17 March 2018 - Published on Amazon.com

The Beast I Loved by Robert Davidson is a non-fiction horror account of spousal abuse. As the subtitle clearly states, it is “A Battered Woman’s Desperate Struggle to Survive.” Published in 2018, in the preface the author provides a context for the book’s publication with an account of the TIME OUT movement in December 2017. This book doesn’t need a context to report the understated horrors of this case that drew national attention in 1996; the actions described remain always horrible, criminal, and a crime against humanity no matter the current attention paid to developing social trends. Davidson points out that this book focuses on the important attention paid to the narrower phenomena of Battered Women’s Syndrome expressed through “learned helplessness.” As if the horrors June Briand were not terrible enough in their own right, she was then abused further by a slow-moving near non-responsive justice system when she was imprisoned for taking extreme measures while attempting to survive and protect her children. In the sense that this novel contributes to the overall movement for increased empowerment for women in a search for equality, this is a novel of social justice. Readers will discover that this novel has its own niche and stands alone in a genre of non-fiction domestic abuse horror.

To support the credibility of this non-fiction account, Davidson uses actual names of people many people will be familiar with. Peter Jennings of ABC News, leaders of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and high-profile lawyers are included in the hard-to-pronounce popular term “fact-checkable.” There is a helpful resources section. Davidson presents interesting information in the author’s notes section that explains his difficulties as a male author in gaining acceptance by principals to tell this story. I feel this is a NSFW novel not due to crude or graphic language. That would be superfluous with these descriptions of abuse. It is because some of the accounts may make a reader shocked and nauseous to the point one could not continue work. Read this one at home.

Davidson’s skill as a writer kept me turning pages until the end in this one-session read. I resisted the urge to turn to the end and discover early the eventual outcome of the case of June Briand. I knew the victim(s) would survive. Even as I read I wanted to enjoy the author’s investigation of the justice system in New Hampshire. In a nation that struggles every day in a conflict between States Rights and Federal Sovereignty, individuals can become extremely depressed as they stare from confinement facilities at States that would decide judicial cases with more compassion and even-handedness. The obvious victim, in this case, was June Briand. Her children were also victims. As June Briand would later state in an address she made during court proceedings, she considered her abuser and husband, Jimmy Briand, the person she killed, a victim.

Liberal US interests frequently obtain national exposure as they mount campaigns for social justice that rely on blaming childhood trauma for present-day criminal behavior. This general reliance on “psychobabble” attract derision from conservative social factions. That is because in attempting to appear on CNN and attract the most attention in the least amount of time available to them, advocates on all sides rely on generalized language that becomes meaningless as it morphs into different forms on late night comedy shows. But when we unpack individual cases such as Briand’s, how can we fail to see the truth of some liberal assertions? The abuse suffered by Briand was abuse that began in childhood and escalated in violence both physical and mental until it (literally) exploded.

June Briand is not a currently a person on the national stage garnering attention. She is attempting to get on with her life. Her case deserves attention as part of campaigns to discourage and eliminate these types of behavior. If human nature is such that we will always have these types of aberrant behavior, we should at least develop better systems for early detection leading to a society that emphasizes social justice rather than social vengeance. Briand is to be commended for lending accounts of her private struggles to highlight social problems.

I gave this novel a five-star Amazon rating and highly recommend it. I read it for free on Kindle Unlimited (KU). It is worth much more than the Amazon purchase price of USD 2.99.

Author Robert Davidson is an international speaker and contributor to columns in many papers and magazines. THE BEAST I LOVED was originally published 2000 under the title FIGHTING BACK. The book has now been revised and updated with new material, allowing Robert to examine family dysfunction, the psychology of violence, and the resulting tragedy. He was the winner of New England’s venerable Seacoast Writers Association award for Best Nonfiction. He also wrote HOW GOOD PARENTS RAISE GREAT KIDS in which he addresses successful childrearing and the keys to personal fulfillment. Excerpts from the book have appeared in Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, and Family Life, and it has been translated into eight foreign languages.

True crime books are haunting in that they represent reportage of actual incidents instead of created horror stories. Perhaps too few have heard of the story of June Briand – an error this book corrects. But the importance of this revised version being published at this particular time – when FINALLY the tragedy of abuse of women is gaining global attention and movements are being successfully launched to make these many tragedies visible – a time to step inside the grit of spousal abuse and the intricacies of damage that genre of crime desperately needs addressing.

Beginning his book with a Preface is a welcome manner to open the door on this case – ‘This is a true story of an abused wife who took her husband’s life and was subsequently sentenced to fifteen years to life for her crime. Many of the names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect privacy. The events, however, are factual and if anything, understated, because no matter how it is written, much of what happened to June Briand cannot be described in words. Ordinary cases of domestic violence don’t make national news. This one did, but then, it was anything but ordinary — it was extraordinary. Extraordinary that after finally putting an end to seven torturous years of horrendous physical and emotional atrocities, administered by the cruelest of men, June Briand was punished still further — this time by a confused and compassionless legal system that was incapable of distinguishing self-defense from criminal intent, child of circumstances from cold-blooded killer, and indeed, right from wrong.’

The facts of the case are clearly outlined in the synopsis: ‘Before domestic violence hot lines and safe houses were widespread, June Briand shot four bullets into her husband’s head and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival—and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him. What kind of woman would slay her own husband? What kind of man would drive her to do it? Why didn’t she just leave him? Based on hundreds of hours interviewing June Briand, speaking with her lawyers, and poring over countless pages of court transcripts, police and hospital records, and interviews with virtually every key person involved with this case, the author explores those difficult questions while exposing the twisted dynamics of a relationship that enslaves a woman—and drives her to kill the beast she loved when she was finally out of hope, out of time, and out of her mind. This story is at once terrifying and maddening, heartrending and ultimately exhilarating—including an unforgettable glimpse inside a maximum security prison.’

After are meticulously detailed related series of interviews and investigation of all the factors of this case, Robert shares the ending – ‘the Pardon Petition also stated “further incarceration is unproductive given the substantial contribution June Briand can offer society if released from prison.”

Impressively written and immensely disturbing, Robert Davidson allow light at the end of his survey of this true crime – June has been given another chance for a more normal life. Prepare for a shockingly real true crime book written by a man who knows how to inform us and bring his concept of human rights into the light. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, March 18